It is a rare day at Ecola State Park that
someone doesn't point a camera southward. With Chapman Point in the
foreground and Haystack Rock in the distance, this is the most
photographed vista along Oregon's 362-mile coast.

Chances are the millions of pictures
taken would look much different -- or might not have been taken at all
-- were it not for John Yeon.

In 1927, when plans emerged to build a
dance hall atop Chapman Point, Yeon -- just 17 at the time -- borrowed
$4,500 against his life-insurance policy and bought the land. It has
remained untouched and highly photogenic ever since.

When Yeon died March 13, 1994 at age
83, Oregon lost one of its most committed and effective
preservationists as well as one of its true visionaries.

The publicity-shy genius son of a
pioneering family who became first-generation Oregon millionaires, Yeon
mostly lived below radar.

But during his long life, he became a
nationally significant architect whose famed Watzek House sparked the
Northwest regional style movement. He amassed a top-notch, if
idiosyncratic, Asian art collection. And he was a civic activist who
saved significant historic buildings and helped establish parks and
preserves.

Yet beneath these looming accomplishments was a man of dramatic contrasts.

Yeon was an iconoclastic architect who often oversaw every detail of
the palatial houses he designed, right down to the tables and chairs.
But he also designed some of the nation's first ultracheap homes made
of plywood.

Yeon was so frugal, he hand-washed his
socks because he believed machines wore them out faster. But he
vacationed with the elite of the New York art world, even once posing
in the nude for famed fashion photographer George Platt Lynes.

With painter Carl Morris and architect
Pietro Belluschi -- both of whom have died in the past year -- Yeon was
the last of Portland's first-generation modernists. All were pioneers
in the 20th century's fundamental rethinking of art and architecture.
And each gained a national reputation rare in such a distant regional
outpost.

Of the three, Yeon was the state's
only native. Easily the most complex, arguably the most brilliant and
surprisingly the least known, he is a classic Oregon story for the fact
he is so difficult to categorize. The Activist

Yeon's unusual relationship to the
natural landscape was bred early. His father, John B. Yeon, was a
lumber millionaire who also oversaw the building of the original
Columbia Gorge Highway, one of the most beautifully crafted scenic
roads in the country.

In 1931, at age 21, Yeon was appointed
by Gov. Julius Meier to Oregon's first State Park Commission. Three
years later, he was made chairman of a National Resources Board, set up
to preserve the Columbia River Gorge.

The resulting report that Yeon
authored was a visionary plan for building a highway, advocating wide
"buffer zones" free of strip development, conservation of topsoil and
gentle curves instead of straightaways.

Though only some of the
recommendations were adopted, the report may have been one of the first
environmental impact statements. It also reads like a mission statement
for the rest of Yeon's life, advocating sensitive use of the land with
the main concern being the pleasure of seeing it.

"John was a park person," according
Nancy Russell, founder of the Friends of the Columbia Gorge. "Clean air
and water, to him, were public-health issues. He wanted to maintain the
gorge to look good."

A man whose shyness more than once
left him speechless before an audience, Yeon nevertheless was a force
to contend with one on one.

"John was tough, persuasive and
stubborn," recalls Brian G. Booth, chairman of the Oregon State Parks
Commission. "He knew his history, and his name gave him clout."

Yeon waged most of his battles behind
the scenes, frequently flying to Washington, D.C., to lobby politicians
and bureaucrats directly.

"John was an aesthetic genius," says
Russell. "He had such a clear vision of what was truly beautiful. He
was so sure of himself no matter what political pressures were being
brought to bear."

Russell points out that Interstate 84,
as originally planned, was to be a straight shot, cutting through the
contours of the undulating river shore. In fact, she says, it was under
construction in 1964 when Yeon flew to Washington, D.C., and persuaded
the head of the U.S. Bureau of Roads that the freeway should follow
more closely the land's natural contours.

"You can actually see some of the original road from Crown Point," says
Russell. "(Now) it's the parking lot for Benson Park."

In addition to his political lobbying,
Yeon sometimes took a more direct role in preserving the land, as with
his purchase of Chapman Point. Similarly, when Yeon discovered plans in
1965 for a factory on the Columbia River's Washington shore, directly
across from Multnomah Falls, he purchased the mile-long stretch.

"I was, I suppose, what would now be
called an environmental activist, though not of the beautifully bearded
sort," Yeon said in a 1984 lecture, wryly distinguishing himself from
the contemporary cliche of Oregon tree-huggers.

Indeed, as Yeon was so ardently
working to preserve the landscape, he also was building on it some of
the most notable houses in Oregon history.

The Architect

Yeon's most renowned work of architecture also
was the first he ever completed. At age 26, he designed the Aubrey
Watzek House in Portland's West Hills with virtually no formal
training, having only done occasional stints as an office boy and
draftsman in architectural offices.

Yet, the house was replete with
inventions that Thomas Jefferson might have envied: the first
double-glazed windows used in Portland, hidden cabinets for sound and
movie equipment and Venetian blinds that slid, pocket-door style, into
the walls.

Perhaps for the first time in the
history of architecture, Yeon divided a window's two functions --
ventilation and view -- providing air through louvres so the vision of
the outdoors would be uncluttered by screens.

But far more than just being
inventive, the house is a procession of spatial, visual and tactile
experiences. From the plain-looking front door, to the
Japanese-inspired garden, to a series of intimately proportioned rooms
paneled in wax-finished noble fir, Yeon plays a game of hide and seek
leading to the grand finale: a living room with 14-foot ceilings and an
entire wall of
windows framing a spectacular view of Mount Hood.

New York's Museum of Modern Art
prominently exhibited photographs of the Watzek House in its
prestigious 10th- and 15th-anniversary exhibits alongside such American
icons as Frank Lloyd Wright's "Falling Water." And American and
European architectural magazines published the house widely.

Indeed, the famed photo of the house,
its gabled roof echoing the peak of Mount Hood, was the icon that
sparked the Eastern architectural establishment's interest in Yeon and
his contemporary, Pietro Belluschi. Seen as a native expression of the
burgeoning modernist movement, their work came to be labeled the
Northwest regional style.

The Watzek House required 75 pages of
plans for its details -- more than most commercial buildings of the
time. The design so impressed the builder, Burt Smith, that he
commissioned Yeon to design four speculative houses in Southwest and
North Portland.

In these, Yeon showed a more thrifty
side to his brilliance. Refining his window and ventilation designs and
using newly invented exterior plywood, these houses were built for
about $5,000 each.

During the construction, Yeon also had
a fence erected around the site, giving carpenters only six feet of
room to work in order to preserve the natural flora.

"My attitude toward building in the
landscape," Yeon said in a 1984 lecture on his work, "was and is that
of a landscape painter imaging what would look well in his landscape
painting."

The Aesthete

In addition to his work as an architect and
preservationist, Yeon was an avid appreciator of art. Yet, despite
exhibiting his architecture in the Museum of Modern Art and his close
friendships with the museum's founder, Alfred Barr, Yeon's own passions
touched on virtually every historical period except modern art.

Instead, Yeon sought expressions of
modernism's ideals from the past, particularly in Asian art. To Yeon,
no finer examples of modernism's dictums -- "form following function"
and "structure as ornament" -- could be found than in 12th-century sake
bottles, Ming Dynasty furniture and 15th-century painted screens, which
he avidly collected.

After 1950, Yeon's only architectural
designs were of five museum galleries in Portland, Kansas City and San
Francisco, three of which were for Asian art.

And, last year, in what would be his
last project, Yeon curated and designed the Asian section of the
Portland Art Museum's show "Portland Collects," 19 years after he
designed the interior of the museum's Asian Gallery.

In subtle ways, the exhibit was an
insight into how Yeon's mind worked. Wildly hopping countries,
traditions, materials and eras with no pretense toward scholarship, the
show nonetheless held together like a symphony performance.

As much as it reflected Yeon's taste,
it portrayed a supreme belief in his own eye to find a common
denominator of elegance beyond history and conventional taste. And it
was a self-confidence that extended beyond art and architecture to the
natural landscape, which he believed sometimes could be improved.

Yeon's lifelong dream for his Chapman
Point land, for instance, was to preserve the actual point and
carefully develop a few homes or a small hotel to the south.

As with all his projects, the goal was
to integrate the architecture with the land. He carefully planted grass
to stabilize the sand and trees to both frame the view of Haystack Rock
and camouflage future buildings from the view of surrounding hills.

Future development of land is being
negotiated by the estate. Over the years, Yeon painstakingly worked his
Columbia River Gorge property -- which he nicknamed "The Shire" -- into
what landscape architect Huntington likens to an 18th-century garden.

"You'd never know it was manipulated,"
says Huntington. "Lawns swirl around rocks, and he selectively cut
trees to create some truly breathtaking views of the gorge and
Multnomah Falls."

In his final years, Yeon carefully
documented his design of the Shire and made provisions to preserve it
through a charitable trust.

In essence, the land will become a
park in its most refined and nuanced form -- a fitting memorial for man
who left his mark on Oregon by being careful about the marks he made.
"John had Oregon in his bones," says Huntington. "He cared about every
blade of grass."